Public Health in Federal Reform - The Commonwealth Fund

Over the past few weeks, the health reform debate has moved beyond platitudes and begun to engage some of the hard issues that will need to be resolved to enact reform. In the Senate, higher-than-expected cost estimates of the Senate Finance Committee's reform proposal, concerns that reform might not be bipartisan, and differing viewpoints about creation of a "public" health plan have dominated the recent debate. By comparison, other aspects of reform are much less controversial, including provisions related to public health. It is too early to predict the final framework of reform—most in Washington do not expect the Senate to meet its original goal of considering a health reform bill before the August 2009 recess—but work produced by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and the Senate Finance Committee offers clues about the provisions it is likely to include. The following are some of the policy provisions related to public health proposed by each committee. Full Article: Public Health in Federal Reform - The Commonwealth Fund